


Hidden

by Huggle



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Castiel, Hurt Sam Winchester, Protective Castiel, Protective Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5171867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is bedridden because his big damn mouth got him cursed, so Castiel accompanies Sam on a hunt to make sure he has backup.</p><p>Turns out he needs it, but so does Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt meme on Oh Sam.

“Are you sure about this, Cas?” Sam asked.

Despite the situation, he found himself fighting back a smile. Castiel was giving him a look of tolerant frustration, the same one Dean had described as kinda cute once before quickly changing the subject in case Sam should think any less of his masculinity.

“Ok, then,” Sam said. He slipped his hand into Castiel’s pocket, retrieved his I.D, and pushed it into the angel’s hand. Then he knocked.

The thing was, while he didn’t doubt Cas, it was too ingrained in him by now to check and double check. Less left to chance, less chance of either of them getting hurt. Or wasting time following up dead end leads while people were dying in nearby Berhampton.

There was every chance that Frederick Bunt was the man they were looking for. A loner, odd, difficult to get along with. If the townspeople they’d interviewed were to be believed – and Sam wasn’t sure he did believe them, not yet, aware how easy it was to become a child kidnapping, drug dealing arsonist who worshipped Satan and didn’t recycle just because you didn’t attend the church social once a month – he was the sole cause of several long running feuds with a lot of people.

And a lot of those people were dead, suddenly, without any cause or explanation. So, of course, Bunt was somehow involved.

Cas knew that something powerful was operating in the area – it was centred here, around Bunt’s admittedly creepy old cabin, though whether Bunt himself was the source or just allied with it, he couldn’t say. Not without seeing the man himself, checking him out. And since whatever it was could clearly drop people in their stride, Cas had been unwilling to let Dean go – he was still getting over the curse-induced stomach flu – or let Sam go alone.

“Take him,” Dean had commanded, as Castiel had put him back to bed after the latest round of vomiting. “Don’t want you going in there alone, Sam. Just don’t let him get dinged.”

Leaving Dean behind while sick had torn at him, and he knew Cas wasn’t happy about it either. But the hex had to work its way out of his system – any attempt to heal it had just prolonged the symptoms. All Cas had been able to do was promise Dean wouldn’t die of it, though he was in for an unpleasant few days, and sternly suggest that the next time they had any encounters with the local witches’ coven Dean refrain from asking if they did practise sky clad and around what time.

Though in Dean’s defence, one of them had just managed to turn the Impala pink so his brother had probably thought that level of dickery was justified.

When he got no answer, Sam knocked again, and called out, “Mr Bunt? FBI, Agents Marcus and King. Can you open the door please?”

Still nothing, but then Cas held up a hand as if he’d heard or sensed something. When Sam saw him pale, he knew they were in trouble. 

The next thing he knew was the cold hard ground meeting his back roughly – Castiel had given him a shove that had carried him several feet away from the cabin.

And now the angel was gone.

Sam fought to take a breath, and managed to roll over and push himself to his feet. Nothing broken but he was going to hurt a lot worse tomorrow than he did right now. He drew his gun and stared in horror at the place where the angel had been standing.

“Cas? Cas! Cas, call out!”

The cabin door was open. It hadn’t been a moment before.

Dammit. Dean was going to kill him.

Sam edged up to the door. He peeked inside, but the cabin was windowless and all he could see were shadows. But he had to go in, so he nudged the door all the way open with his foot and moved smartly inside, bringing the gun up, ready for anything to make a move on him.

Castiel was lying unconscious on the floor. Frederick Bunt was kneeling over him, one hand on the angel’s neck.

“Get away from him,” Sam warned, keeping the weapon trained on Bunt.

“No, wait,” Bunt said. He was maybe sixty or sixty-five, rake thin, looking like he’d had the worst week of his life. “I didn’t do this. It did it and it pulled him in here. I didn’t hurt him!”

“Ok,” Sam said, hoping he sounded calm and reassuring. It was hard to fake either when Castiel was down for the count and some stranger was there touching him. “I believe you, but I need you to move back from him.”

“You don’t believe me,” Bunt said. “It told me it’d make sure no one did. It’s going to punish me until I die. And it wasn’t even my fault!”

Sam’s eyes were slowly adjusting to the cabin’s interior. He saw the shotgun too late, and even as Bunt raised the weapon and fired, Sam did too. 

But not in time.

::::

“Sam. Sam!”

Someone was shaking him. Sam groaned as a burn started spreading across his torso. He tried to push the hands away but the grip was sure and strong, and he knew suddenly who was holding on to him.

“Cas?”

He opened his eyes. Castiel was kneeling over him, and Sam wasn’t sure when he’d ended up on the ground. But from this angle he could see the damage Castiel had taken starting to manifest. Blood was pouring from the corner of his right eye, and a painful dark bruise was forming that looked almost like the imprint of a hand. Its twin could already be seen like a dark band of hurt around Castiel’s throat.

“Sam, you need to get up. Can you? Carefully.”

Why carefully? Then he remembered, and it somehow made the pain a billion times worse. He tried to curl in on himself, but Cas pushed him back, held him still.

He could hear the angel urging him to breathe, to try and calm down, and Sam forced himself to focus on Cas.

Finally, he had it under control enough that everything settled back down around him. 

Behind Cas, Frederick Bunt was slumped against the wall. Sam had hit him in the forehead, blood congealed around a neat little hole. The shadows hid what was probably most of his brain mass decorating the wall behind him.

“Is it done?”

Cas shook his head. “We have to get out. I can help you, but it’s going to hurt.”

Sam wondered if he was going into shock. Why hadn’t Cas helped him already?

“Can’t you heal me?”

Castiel looked over his shoulder as if he expected something to be standing behind him. An awful sounding creak came from near where Bunt lay, and then it was above them, in the roof.

“Hold on,” Cas urged, and scooped Sam up in his arms.

Sam couldn’t hold back on the cry of pain. He gripped fiercely at Castiel’s shoulder. Not the first time he’d been hit with buckshot, but at the close range he was from Bunt he knew he was in trouble. He could feel his shirt and jacket sticking to him front and back. The damage the buck had done to him on the way in, the way through and the way out – he was starting to crash, he could feel it.

Breathing was getting harder. He couldn’t hold his head up, and worryingly, the pain was starting to recede.

“Cas,” he tried to say, but all that came out was a mumble.

“I know,” Cas said, and he didn’t sound too great either. 

He turned them both so he could get Sam through the door, and for one frightening moment, Sam expected something to haul them back.

But Cas was muttering something under his breath, and though Sam felt like something cold tried to settle around them it was pushed back and away.

Cas kept going. He kept up that quiet litany and he kept moving, jogging now, bearing Sam away from the cabin. He didn’t stop until they were past the car, maybe about forty feet back, and Sam knew he had lost so much blood he was on his way out.

Cas seemed to know it too. He dropped to his knees, kept Sam in his arms, and then started to heal him.  
It wasn’t the first time Castiel had brought him back from the brink. Sam had never been able to put it into words, and Dean couldn’t either on the few times they’d discussed what it felt like. He was almost glad he couldn’t because no words he could use would do anything less than trivialise it.

But a moment later, he was whole and … renewed, almost, and disengaged himself from Castiel’s arms.

In just enough time to stop the angel tumbling face first into the dirt.

“Ok, now you,” he said. Castiel braced himself with both hands on Sam’s shoulders. As Sam watched, the bleeding stopped, the bruising faded, and Castiel was able to straighten up.

“What was it?” Sam asked.

Castiel didn’t answer. He pressed a hand over Sam’s eyes and a moment later there was a low _whuff_ sound and a feeling of warm pressure. 

When Cas removed his hand, Sam glanced back at the cabin. It was gone. Not destroyed, not burned down…just gone, like there hadn’t ever been one there.

“Cas?”

“It’s over,” the angel said, and helped Sam to his feet. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
